Under state law, every new house built and sold in N.C. comes with an implied warranty that the home is free from major structural defects when it was sold, but the builder can expressly warrant the house for more, and for longer, often up to 10 years. But a decision by an N.C. court comes with no warranty that it will ever be enforced ─ or even understandable ─ or for how long.

Mike Silvers of Highland Creek doesn't have to drive to Spartanburg, S.C., to visit a Publix grocery store. But he still has to drive across the state line, and he and many others in the state are longing for the Lakeland, Fla.-based grocer to open stores north of the border. Evidently Publix has taken heed, with three Charlotte area stores announced and many more in the pipeline.

The N.C. Department of Transportation has paid one of the largest eminent domain settlements in the agency’s history to a shopping center that was essentially cut off from a major thoroughfare in Charlotte.

After several months of conjecture, two Florida-based companies, Publix, out of Lakeland, and Stiles, out of Fort Lauderdale, this week revealed they were joining forces at Mint Hill Commons and that Stiles would be developing the roughly 66,000-square-foot shopping center.

In a town that regularly rejects development projects, Antiquity LLC’s proposal to alter its plans to add 80,000 square feet of retail to its new-urbanist, mixed-use residential development sailed through the arduous planning process in a relatively quick four months.

Amenities, such as an eighth-floor tenant lounge, aren’t reserved solely for The Vue, the 51-floor condominium-turned-apartment tower at Fifth and Pine streets. In the booming apartment construction in Charlotte, the days of a simple pool and clubhouse are over as developers are focusing on projects heavy on amenities – the more unusual, the better.

It’s been 22 years since the Morrison Regional Library opened in SouthPark, at the intersection of Colony Road and Morrison Boulevard. Back in 1991, said David Singleton, director of libraries in Mecklenburg County, people used the library very differently than they do today.

In 2008, the Charlotte real estate market was beginning to feel the oppression of the Great Recession. That's when a triumvirate real estate group -- Core Properties, Collette & Associates and Trinity Capital Advisors, which is a sister company to Trinity Partners -- decided to open the 100 percent speculative Linville Building.